This topic has been marked solved and closed to new posts due to inactivity. We hope you'll join the conversation by posting to an open topic or starting a new one.
Thank you for the informed reply. I'll give that a try and report back. Where can I find the alternative firmware you speak of. I'm very grateful for your help, I have average tech skills and I'm learning alot just reading. I'm all googled out! I'm glad I found this forum. Your's is the first sugestion that makes sense and it's something simple I can understand and do myself. Got my fingers crossed...I'm extremely motivated to solve this issue. 🙂
Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
@Diggie3 wrote: Really... 713 posts on the topic in this thread alone, and that's what you're going to ask?
You are fair to say this but, I was reading about wireless drop-off complaints. Before I continued to read another 700 posts on the same topic, I posted about internet connectivity. I'm seeing strong wifi signal but my Netgear CM500 modem is dropping intermittantly after the 1.0.9.18 update this morning. I was thinking a different issue. The problem is corrected by re-booting the modem and not the router.
Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
Thank you for the informed reply. I'll give that a try and report back. Where can I find the alternative firmware you speak of. I'm very grateful for your help, I have average tech skills and I'm learning alot just reading. I'm all googled out! I'm glad I found this forum. Your's is the first sugestion that makes sense and it's something simple I can understand and do myself. Got my fingers crossed...I'm extremely motivated to solve this issue. 🙂
There are several alternative firmwares for the R7000 like Advanced Tomato, DD-WRT and XWRT-Vortex. I'm using XWRT-Vortex which I find it's the best. It's based on AsusWRT and can be flashed the same way you flash NG firmware. Be aware that reverting is less easy, but once installed you probably won't go back. Just Google on XWRT-Vortex for reviews and download link, latest version is 380.69.
@Diggie3 wrote: Really... 713 posts on the topic in this thread alone, and that's what you're going to ask?
You are fair to say this but, I was reading about wireless drop-off complaints. Before I continued to read another 700 posts on the same topic, I posted about internet connectivity. I'm seeing strong wifi signal but my Netgear CM500 modem is dropping intermittantly after the 1.0.9.18 update this morning. I was thinking a different issue. The problem is corrected by re-booting the modem and not the router.
Dropping and reconnecting WAN to LAN is also one of the issues caused by the latest firmware as well as a spontaneous reboot of the router.
I'm still on 1.0.9.14 - and won't be going up to .18 or .20 because of the posts in this thread.
I wanted to chime in about XWRT-Vortex - I tried installing that, unfortunately it caused one of my 2 EX6100 wifi extenders to stop connecting to the router. Either one connects or the other, but not both. They're both configured exactly the same way (read: save settings on one, upload to the other). They work flawlessly when R7000 is running stock Netgear firmware, but not with XWRT-Vortex.
Also, I have 2 Amazon Fire TVs and 1 Fire HD 7 tablet - and all 3 have been working flawlessly with 1.0.9.14. When I switched to XWRT-Vortex, the Fire HD tablet stopped connecting to wifi after any change to the wifi configuration in the router. I had to power-cycle the router for the tablet to start connecting.
@codeflux If you don't have issues with the NG firmware I would not upgrade nor installing alternative firmware.
I don't know the EX6100 and what settings are copied from the one to the other, but make sure you have different IP-addresses for each EX6100. Did you try to configure the EX6100 one by one manually? I think both your EX6100 are in Extender mode. Be aware that one extender will cut the wifi speeds in half, by adding another extender in the same network it will cut into 1/4. It's always better to use an extender in AccessPoint mode and connect the EX6100 by a networkcable.
How often do you change the WiFi configuration of the router? Once it is set, I don't touch it for a long period.
This HTML5 based speed test not only tests your speed but also tests for dropped packets.
I first connected my laptop directly to my internet modem and had no dropped packets.
I then reconnected the R7000 to the modem and ran the same test again. The test results showed that 36%-39% of my test packets were dropped. Based on other posts in this thread, I downgraded the firmware from V1.0.9.20 Beta to V1.0.7.12_1.2.5, repeated the test and got the same results. The test also indicated that the R7000 may not be suitable for games, voip and other web applications because of these issues.
I would appreciate it if more users would use the above speed test to test their internet connection with the R7000 and report their results. I'd especially be interesed in hearing from Tomato and Vortex firmware R7000 users.
Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
I just updated to 1.0.9.18 today using the routers onboard automatic update. I was pretty out of date before the update (at least 18 months)
Since updating my connectivity has pretty much gone.
My ISP provides 150mbps down and 15mbps up which is often delivered more like 180mbps down.
Laptop wirelessly connected to the router to do all tests below and all tests were done today.
Before updating testing using Fast.com or speedtest.net resulted in speeds between 145 and 185mbps. Netflix, twitch, youtube, vimeo all stream without buffering at all with no issues.
After updating using the same sites I am able to get 3.5mbps still on the laptop. The router itself doing the check in the QOS detects 97mbps - 130mbps. Trying to do any sort of media streaming results in buffering every few minutes (if that).
Tried the QOS workaround (turning QOS on, updating Database, turning it off) mentioned for the older 1.0.9.12 firmware issues and still get the same speeds, no improvement at all.
I clearly should have checked this forum before applying the updates, I also should have remembered my original firmware update.
Any ideas on what to try next? / what to provide for diagnostics?
Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
I trust the test because when I connected my computer directly to the modem, all the results were correct with no packet loss. The only change in the test bed was the insertion of the R7000 connected to the modem and my computer connected to the R7000.
The test I performed is a test of relative performance with only one variable being changed. Directly connected, the test showed the correct upload/download speeds and no packet drops. Connecting the R7000 showed 36% to 39% packets dropped.
Also you should note that some of the other speed tests preferred by ISPs, throw away a percentage of packets at the beginning and end of the test which jukes the speed results higher. This test includes all packets in the speed computation.
Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
It's mind-boggling that the bad code is STILL available for download and installation from Netgear's site!!
Your options are to downgrade to 1.0.7.12 or go with an alternative (3rd party) firmware. Many of us have moved to xwrt-vortex. It's the same code as what runs on ASUS routers.
Don't count on Netgear to fix their screw up any time soon. Take a look at how long this thread has been active.
Thanks @brianhelman that's kinda what I had already figured. I have a friend here who recommends dd-wrt so I'll likely shift over to that instead.
I just wanted to give Netgear a chance to respond first. I've never seen a firmware update be this bad, I've seen changes of a few mbps but not 145mbps loss. As a developer myself I can appreciate bugs happening, but how this made it off the QA hardware I just don't know
Thanks @brianhelman that's kinda what I had already figured. I have a friend here who recommends dd-wrt so I'll likely shift over to that instead.
I just wanted to give Netgear a chance to respond first. I've never seen a firmware update be this bad, I've seen changes of a few mbps but not 145mbps loss. As a developer myself I can appreciate bugs happening, but how this made it off the QA hardware I just don't know
I tried DD-WRT Kong version and found it not that stable. Also it has a lot of settings to tweak your router. But if your friend recommends it, you can give it a try. I didn't use Advanced-Tomato. I really like XWRT-Vortex as it is based on AsusWRT. It has a very good GUI and nice features. It is easy to flash and setup but most of all it is super stable.
Thanks @brianhelman that's kinda what I had already figured. I have a friend here who recommends dd-wrt so I'll likely shift over to that instead.
I just wanted to give Netgear a chance to respond first. I've never seen a firmware update be this bad, I've seen changes of a few mbps but not 145mbps loss. As a developer myself I can appreciate bugs happening, but how this made it off the QA hardware I just don't know
I tried DD-WRT Kong version and found it not that stable. Also it has a lot of settings to tweak your router. But if your friend recommends it, you can give it a try. I didn't use Advanced-Tomato. I really like XWRT-Vortex as it is based on AsusWRT. It has a very good GUI and nice features. It is easy to flash and setup but most of all it is super stable.
@Djzgfx wrote: Dude, just install 3rd party firmware like the rest of us have. It’s not the hardware, it’s the firmware.
He dude!! Read the history... I am running fine with my new Linksys router. The R7000 is running Tomato for months. I don't care anymore. I'm only following this terrible story. Never Netgear for me again.
Same here. I'm following this thread just to see if NG ever get this fixed but even if they do release a new firmware I'll be sticking with .20 hotfix as it's still working for me so far and I don't want to rock the boat.
Even though I haven't been affected by these problems it has put me off Netgear products in the future.
I'm in the business and have fitted NG products a fair bit in the passed but how would I explain this situation to a customer I have recommended this product to.
Yeah, like other brands don't have problems... I think you have no experience with bad service do you?
I mean, i had to deal with Alphacool an water cooling company that makes parts for water cooling PC's. They are by far the worst in the world when it comes to service..
I use my R7000 Router for over 2 years now and i rarely have any problems.. Once i had a problem with it but it got solved pretty quick after i contacted customer support team.
I'm a developer and know that things can go wrong. But Netgear really are dragging their heals to fix it and are not communicating with their customers very well.
They would be better off pushing out one of their older firmwares as an update while they fix the issues.
Like I've already said I'm not having any issues with the latest .20 firmware .
I really hope they are awake and fixing this issue. I have been having internet disconnects since November-December. I finally decided to log on here and now I see that it is their firmware that is doing this. I did upgrade to the .20 but see that I may need to downgrade to a release from June or July that is more stable. For as much money as this router cost, this should be resolved. Please Netgear get this fixed.
Model: R7000|Nighthawk AC1900 Dual Band WiFi Router
